The Oakland fault

This morning I led a small walking tour of the Hayward fault in downtown Hayward. That’s a good spot to display various signs of our eminent strike-slip faults (the ones that move sideways). But when I visit the fault—and I do often, because I believe in getting to know it intimately—I find an Oakland site. This is the view from near the fire memorial on Tunnel Road. The fault runs from the notch on the left horizon down to the shadowed area on the right, which is Lake Temescal Regional Park. You may notice a lot of infrastructure and housing nearby!

Down at the park, they have put a nice interpretive sign next to the fault trace:

There’s nothing like this in Hayward. They don’t seem to be proud of their fault. I think Oakland should take it over. It’s the largest city on the fault and the city with the longest stretch of the fault in its boundaries. It would go along with the whole gritty Oakland thing. “We’re so bad the earth is all ripped up here, man.” Maybe the USGS can give it an “L.A. Angels of Anaheim” type name for us: the Hayward fault of Oakland. It might make up for the “Oakland A’s of Fremont” baseball team.